Are You Checking the Right Boxes?
By Kathy and Tim Bush, founders of War Room Ministries m
After almost three decades of checking the wrong boxes – lies, affairs, secrets – and after over one decade of checking the right ones – prayer, faith, trust – marriage, sex and all, is actually fun. Here’s how we got there.
ROUGH STARTS, WRONG ATTITUDES
Kathy: I came into marriage damaged and broken. Being molested as a child led me to have multiple boyfriends and unhealthy sexual relationships. I knew it was wrong, but I saw it as a way of being loved. I was very shy, and this lifestyle, bad as it was, took a kind of courage that I didn’t have. I turned to alcohol, which gave me the boldness to come out of my shell. Even at 16, a couple of pregnancy scares didn’t stop me from using alcohol to numb my senses to find love. It seemed like the only way to cope.
Tim: Like Kath, I came to marriage broken. Adopted by my grandparents, I got most of my advice from my grandfather—my pop. He shared that being successful and working hard was the way to have “relationships” with women. Even at our morning table conversations, he encouraged me “to sow my wild oats.” He said that being involved with multiple women would help me because, when I got married, I’d be “stuck” with only one. This man, whom I trusted more than any other, was my model for manhood. Of course, he gave me the best advice that he knew, and I followed it, but he was wrong. It took me over three decades to overcome the damage, and I couldn’t do it on my own.
HIGH HOPES, WRONG BOXES
Kathy: We were both looking for spouses to fix ourselves. When I went looking for a husband to take care of my needs, Tim checked all the boxes. He was the first man I ever officially dated—a “real man”:
This relationship started like all the other ones did–alcohol first, then sex on the first date–, but it was different. I fell in love hard. With Tim, premarital sex became easy, even without alcohol, and this time, the pregnancy scare became a reality, only five months and five days after our first date. We both wanted to do the “right” thing, so we got married and had our first child just seven months later.
Tim: I had my own boxes to check for the woman I was going to be “stuck” with:
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🗹 Kath was “church” girl from a “church-going” family.
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🗹 She was extremely good-looking.
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🗹 She could take care of all of my sexual and personal needs.
When Kath said she was pregnant, it was on my heart to give this kid a last name. Four years prior, in a different relationship, I had made a choice that would haunt me decades later, and I wasn’t doing that again.
DEEP REGRETS, OLD HABITS
Kathy: On our wedding night, I was not feeling well physically, knowing that Tim had big sexual expectations. I believed that “good sex” was something I owed Tim for marrying me, and it didn’t stop that night. It continued many years into the marriage. Especially when it came to sex, I had no voice, no self-esteem to talk about it, and, for sure, no faith to believe that Tim would listen even if I did. In my mind, sex was all about him. Looking to fill a void, I stepped out of the marriage many times to find love and to be heard, yet all those relationships left me feeling empty. What was I missing?
Tim: On our wedding night, I knew I’d made a mistake. Convinced that everything I had thought Kath could be was only in my mind, I found that sex was especially a big letdown. Any thoughts I had about giving up “sowing my wild oats” after marriage just went away, and my old habits came right back. I loved Kath, but I thought that she just wasn’t equipped to give me the love I so desperately needed, so I started searching for it. The journey that started in my broken childhood lasted until I was 47 years old. When the scales fell off my eyes at the end of it, I found the answer that had been right in front of me all of the time.
NEW KNOWLEDGE, RIGHT BOXES
Kathy & Tim: A series of events, years in the making, brought both of us to the end of ourselves… and straight to Jesus. When we gave every facet of our lives to Him, and we mean every facet, the result was a radically transformed life together. The marriage became our marriage, and sex became different. We went to a FamilyLife Weekend to Remember and really talked about sex for the very first time. Here’s what we didn’t know before that:
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We didn’t know that Jesus designed sex as a gift for married couples.
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We didn’t know that it gave HIM joy for us to honor Him in the bedroom with sex.
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We didn’t know that we are gifts to each other from HIM as well.
We had been selfish for so many years, especially in the bedroom. We now know that because Jesus designed sex and gave it to us, selfishness can have no part in it. After four decades of marriage, we are still growing in all areas, even sexually. We treat each other like a gift, so, from time to time, we ask each other if we are checking the right boxes, according to Ephesians 5:33:
🗹 Tim: “Kath, how am I doing in the “loving you” department?”
Give me one thing I can do so that you can feel more loved.
🗹 Kathy: “Tim, how am I doing in the “respecting you” department?”
Give me one thing I can do so that you can feel more respected.
Try these intimate questions as a couple. They lead to communication that builds deeper trust, which, while we can’t guarantee it, usually causes more…and better…sex. For more than a decade, our marriage, with Jesus at the center of it, sex and all, has actually been fun, and it has shown us how amazing and giving HE is. Our book, Sex on the First Date, details our journey of forgiveness and healing. It also has tools to help you wherever you are in your marriage.
Our prayer for you is that you learn to check the right boxes.